Thursday, November 29, 2007

Movie Review of "No Country for Old Men"

Tonight I went to a screening of the new Coen Brothers film, "No Country for Old Men." MAN it was nuts. Again, a classic, powerful, crazy, mixed up movie, which was (as the Coen Brothers' films tend to be) all over the place with crazy things happening all the time, but at the same time a completely direct and honest film.

I won't give away the story here, but suffice it to say it's about an extremely violent and disturbed man who tracks down someone who owes him money. This guy treats human life like it's nothing, and it paints a pretty terrible picture of society. Tommy Lee Jones plays an older sheriff, getting closer to retirement and getting more and more worn out with his job, and discouraged by the types of people that exist today. The film is terribly honest and really shows a dark and negative side of humanity, about how people don't care to help out others in need (the scene with the college kids walking home from the Mexican border is crazy), and the movie really plays around with your preconceptions about how a film should run. The ending is unexpected, the major plot twists happen out of absolutely nowhere and without warning... it's pretty good. Well done film, and a pretty scary and suspenseful movie, as well as being a pretty hardcore social commentary on life in America.

Well done AGAIN, Coen Brothers!! It's not a hint like The Big Lebowski, and I wouldn't even call this a Black Comedy like their usual style... this is a straight-up suspense film with a whole lot of indirect and direct discussion on life in America. Very interesting, and great film.

It's got a 96% on RottenTomatoes and an 8.9/10 on IMDB with over 11,000 votes. Pretty amazing response to this movie. There are some reviews saying it's better than Fargo. A few of the reviewers talked about the tight editing, and I guess actually I would agree with that, the editing was really, really good, and the camera angles and the way the scenes were cut together really pushed the story. Awesome movie, crazy, weird, tense and terrible, but still a fantastic piece of cinematic art.

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